Finally, Officially French

. . . And yet I still haven’t acquired French humor.

When the letter arrived stipulating that we needed to come to the court house regarding my request for French nationality, DH and I both raised a sarcastic eyebrow. “What now?” we thought.  I imagined that it would be a request for some new paper, some stamp from some obscure government office.  Perhaps an additional in-home visit from a local police officer to see if we were really living together–would they be open to visiting our tent? .

We remembered the remarks of one of the police officers who’d helped determine my ‘level of integration’ and the ‘nature of our marriage:’

You never know how long it will take to get nationality.  Basically, they send all the files to Paris where they sit in stacks in a board room, waiting until the bureaucrats arrive–after coffee, of course. . . They sift through the piles as a committee.  When they find an easy case, they approve it and send it on.  If your file is complicated, it goes to the bottom of the pile–or some other pile.  Maybe a year, maybe two. . .depends on the pile.  Ever been divorced?

On the day the letter mandated our appearance, we arrived at the courthouse, patiently hunted down the woman in charge.  In August, administration has a bare-bones feel to it in France–the people that require your presence can be hard to find.  We waited again as an assistant searched her out and sat in her office with even more patience wondering what would happen next.

Congratulations, you’re French. . .it’s retroactive, actually.

Convinced it could not be so easy, I scanned the paperwork for any errors that could mean more paperwork and corrections and found none.  I signed in the box for my signature and became French.

DH, who received his US nationality only a few years ago told me about the ceremony: a mass oath of allegiance, pomp, circumstance and a concert given by Pacific Islanders (!?!?).  People near him cried, he told me.

I’m far from shedding tears over a new nationality, but I must admit to feeling entirely strange about the situation.

It’s not that I expected to feel more French once I received a paper proclaiming my citizenship.  But never had it been so obvious to me that I’m NOT French.  All the time I’ve spent in France I’ve felt like a foreigner.  I appreciate the social awareness, the fact that the French don’t simply leave each other to their fates;  I shake my head at the bureaucratic insanity and the fact that people persist in parking on sidewalks–or letting their dogs make toilets of them. . . I suppose that makes me like many French people, actually.

And yet, there are many concepts and customs I just can’t grasp.

• The humour noire in the film I watched yesterday (Le bruit des glaçons) in which an alcoholic writer takes a break from drinking himself to death to fight his cancer–another character in the film.  I didn’t laugh a single time, not even a chuckle, not even a smile.
• The fact that you are unlikely to get a parking ticket. . .but someone might take the law into their own hands, slashing your tires. . .
• The astounding fact that when I went to the library and asked for something recent, light and funny for my summer reading that the librarian set me up with an autobiography of an author –from inception to age three!  I found existential angst, metaphysical questions, concerns about death and mortality, plenty of naval gazing and some well-written prose–but not humor.
• The fact that so many complain about the ’system’ and how corrupt it is, yet so many are willing to cheat the same system. . .

I once read when studying anthropology that you can only consider yourself part of a culture when you’ve learned enough to know what parts of the culture you accept and what parts you reject. I suppose I must admit to rejecting many aspects of the US culture already–it comes quite naturally to me, in fact.  I wonder when I’ll finally feel justified in rejecting aspects of French culture as an insider.

It’s hard not to just take a step back and say, “well, of course it seems strange–I’m a foreigner here.”

How about the rest of you?  Do you find yourself ill at ease with cultural practices in your homeland. . .in your country of residence?

People today: ruder than ever?

Sometimes you hear something so much that it simply starts to seem true: something like cultural brainwashing.  I often wonder if that’s true for the premise that people today have somehow taken lack of civility to a new extreme.

It’s easy to see how such brainwashing could occur. I walk around the city on a busy day and see some woman illegally parked and blocking an entire line of traffic–when people honk at her she yells at them.  It’s rather like watching Jerry Springer in French.  Ugly.  And it sticks in my mind, regardless of all the other days I’ve spend wandering the city and never seeing anyone behave like such a cretin.

Later, I run into one of those people in a café and get an earful about how ‘people these days’ don’t know how to act.  A vivid (if anomalous) experience plus a little ranting start to create an impression that I have a hard time fighting: people start to seem pretty rude.

I wouldn’t really know if ‘people these days’ have managed to pull of new feats of rudeness since I’ve only been an adult on the lookout for these things for about 10-15 years. Before that, I was simply a rude teenager   So what about people in the know?  People who’ve been mature adults now for decade upon decade?

Do the more experienced, my elders, have some window into the truth or are they just rehashing some old line–a line that may have originated during, say the barbarian invasions in Europe.  I can see someone coming up with the term ‘people these days‘ at a time where villages were being sacked and pillaged right and left. What a sheer lack of respect!

Those who argue the world is ruder today:

I see a number of people arguing this point.  Some of them, certainly, fall within the ranks of the old and the bitter–you know, the folks who always need to rant about something.  But also . . .

• (some) teachers and professors–if you’ve ever worked in education, you’ll stumble upon many  a conversation about how young people have attained new heights of incivility.  It goes with the trade.  As a high school and middle school teacher, I certainly found myself shocked at times–can’t say that a decade or two ago things were different?
• (some) customer service representatives–salespeople, bankers, hotel owners have oft filled my ear about the increasing disrespect they face at the hands of customers who feel increasingly entitled and who use yelling and insults more than ever as a means for getting what they want.  Once again–I’m sure being yelled at at and insulted at work would curl my hair and stick out in my mind.  I might even be likely to bring it up more later, but does it really happen more now than ever?
• ??? Anyone else feel they’ve seen an increase in incivility in their line of work?

What is rude, anyway?

Many times, when I note a person’s behavior as rude, shocking, uncivilized, It’s because they’ve broken some social rule that I believe in. I often find myself wondering, “Who do you think you are!?”

People argue that adolescents (and even children) no longer  ‘respect’ their teachers or elders, harking back to the ‘good old days’ when you could just smack a kid–and if the parents found out they’d smack them again at home. Would we all just be better off –somehow more respectful–if we started smacking the young and impudent again? Or was the ‘respect’ you may have once seen on the part of the young under such conditions simply balanced out by disrespect on the part of the person doing the corporal punishment?

Perhaps not all relationships have changed so drastically as the teacher/student relationship. I’m sure that hotel owners were never in the habit of smacking potential clients who demanded too much or acted too rudely.  However, I don’t have any real difficulty imagining acts of rudeness taking place during the 17th century–for example.  A wealthy customer walks in the door, insults the hotel owner. . .it seems a fairly believable scenario to me.

However–being disrespectful to someone within the confines of social hierarchy often goes unpunished and unnoticed. I can very easily imagine a a noble insulting a serf with impunity–or for a more typically American historical reference–a white person disrespecting a black person back in the Jim Crow days.  I wonder if folks shook their heads at that kind of behavior thinking, “Ugh, people these days are so rude,” or if they perhaps failed to notice the insults and injuries because they fell into a social order that had already been accepted.

One thing is sure, insults and disrespect flowing up the food chain would no doubt have resulted in someone asking the question, “Who do you think you are?”  And then most likely dolling some very tangible consequences for the breach in the social order.

Rudeness without the social stratification:

Could it be that these days, you don’t have to be in a position that commands respect or authority to mouth off and say something rude? I’m certain that being the object of rudeness or disrespect doesn’t feel any better today than it ever did.  But I suspect that a great deal of disrespect went unnoticed and unpunished in the past because it was socially accepted.  Our social hierarchy has weakened since, so we now have an equal opportunity for disrespect.

Perhaps what we need to do is decide whether or not we really want to exercise our new-found ‘right’ to be rude–what do you think?

Of Mice, Men and Antidepressants

I’m up with the sun and my coffee, vaguely aware of a bit of radio chatter about (rampant) use of anti-depressants in France. I’m not quite listening–after all,  we Western Europeans or Northern Americans, know increasing numbers of our populations take antidepressants.

So the story on anti-depressant use in France becomes prattle in the background of my morning–things I already know, yada, yada, yada. . .

• The rate of depression in France is said to be about 9% and the French consume the most antidepressants of any of the Countries studied in the European Study of the Epidemiology of Mental Disorders (2000)
• Their neighbors in the UK seem to be catching up in terms of antidepressant use  (according to this article in Sante-Medecine).
• In 2002, 9.7 percent of the French population received some kind of antidepressant (ecosante-2010).

My overgeneralizing and under-caffeinated brain adds a little prior knowledge to the chatter . . .  roughly 10% of all of us on drugs, uh-huh–just like in the States . . .

• A 2005 study shows that about 10% of Americans were taking antidepressants  (USA Today).
• The rate of anti-depressant consumption in the US has nearly doubled since 1996.  (idem)

Then I choke on my own coffee–Wha?  Did he just compare mice to people?  I hate that. According to the man on the radio, mice injected with Prozac will struggle longer under stress than their un-medicated ‘colleagues.’  Go figure.  I was under the impression that Prozac was little better than the placebo. Although it will take more than some schmuck on the radio to change my mind, the wheels are spinning.

By the way, I wonder how they ’stress’ these mice–perhaps my making them work for an annoying boss, or telling them they could be fired at any time, putting them through a nasty divorce?  Which brings me to my next point:

Does it bother anyone else when the behavior of mice is blithely applied to the human condition? I can think of a number of things that seem to work for mice that just don’t fly for me . . . like, eating their young when under stress.  Seems like we may have a slightly different take on psychological stress.  Just throwing that out there.

And what’s so great about continuing to struggle under stress may I ask? Sure, if you are a cave-person facing down a large, furry predator–struggling under stress has it’s perks.  (In that case, kuddos on getting internet access in your cave) But what if you’re that woman who was unhappy about her husband’s way of dealing with the finances whose doctor prescribed anti-depressants as mentioned in this article from CNN:

She got the antidepressant, and she did feel better, said Dr. Dworkin, a Maryland anesthesiologist and senior fellow at Washington’s Hudson Institute, who told the story in his book “Artificial Unhappiness: The Dark Side of the New Happy Class.” But in the meantime, Dworkin says, the woman’s husband led the family into financial ruin.

Do anti-depressants keep us mindlessly trudging away at the wrong hamster wheel when we should really get off and take stock of our problems? (Oops ok, mixed rodent references, but roll with me here.) Sometimes people really do get depressed.  Sometimes we really can’t change our circumstances and we just have ‘get through it.’ And sometimes, we really need a wake-up call because we’re behaving in a stupid and self-destructive way and we know better. A little unhappiness may me worth it if it drives you to change your ways.

I rinse out my coffee cup (that’s right, I’m down to only 2 cups a day) and wonder why the guy on the radio doesn’t mention the costs of Prozac and its peers.

In France and the US, anti-depressants are increasingly being prescribed for problems other than depression.  Once again, USA Today cites a study from the Archives of General Psychiatry that states, “Half of those taking antidepressants used them for back pain, nerve pain, fatigue, sleep difficulties or other problems.”

The thing is, here in France we have a great medical system that is in danger due to increased debt. According to the article, “Le Prozac, a-t-il améloiré la qualité de vie des Français,“  anti-depressants can actually cut costs to the French medical system when used to treat actual depression by decreasing sick-leave (which is often paid by the government here) as well as increased illness that tends to crop up in people who are truly depressed.  What the country cannot seem to afford (again, according to the above article), is the blanket medication of people who are . . .unhappy.

So what do you think? I’m certainly not going to get into the business of judging others for their personal decisions in this department.  I’m clearly not a medical or psychiatric professional, just a person with some questions.  And a healthy addiction to one of the most commonly used psychotropic drugs of our time: coffee.

But that doesn’t stop me from having my opinions on this matter–and I bet you have yours as well!

Confessions of a Coffee Addict

Have you ever engaged in some behavior that flies in the face of everything you believe? Well, today, I’d like to point out one of my very bad habits and its result.  I’m rather embarrassed to admit that I’m officially addicted to coffee–again!    I’m not saying that people who enjoy one cup of coffee a day–or possibly two–are doing something wrong.  With moderation, I’m sure coffee consumption is a perfectly healthy, normal pleasure.  And we all need our little luxuries, right?

Look at this cup of espresso in our local café in France--seems innocent, right?

The problem is that I don’t tend to be very moderate about coffee. I recently noticed, for example, that I’ve begun to drink one pot of coffee in the morning (from the French press so the caffeine has plenty of time to infuse its way into the water!).  Then I drink a little more coffee mid-morning. . .and sometimes another cup in the afternoon.  I’m pretty sure I’m back up to about six cups a day–at least.

I’m a little mad at myself because this is probably about the fourth time I’ve worked up to such high levels of coffee consumption, and I know better. While no one seems to be able to agree on whether or not a cup of coffee a day is good or bad for your health, I doubt anyone would argue that six or more cups a day is a good idea.  Plus, I tend to get a little . . .hyperactive once I get up past four cups a day.

Some additional reasons coffee makes no sense for me:

• It’s not a local food.
• Since I only buy organic and fair trade, (and since I consume quite a bit of it) it’s not frugal either.
• Since I’m a bit of a coffee snob, coffee is definitely not frugal.
• Really coffee has no nutritional value whatsoever, not even calories, so I’m consuming it for no logical reason.

Some of the illogical reasons I drink coffee:

• I have lots of fond memories of family gatherings with the smell of constantly percolating coffee.
• I equate coffee-drinking with a ‘rest’ or a ‘break.’
• I like the taste–wait, maybe that’s a logical reason for drinking coffee
• I enjoy the pause café and café culture here in France.

So what to do? I could just quit altogether, but I’d feel like I was leaving some significant part of my life behind.  Should I accept this one little affront to my health, this one little un-frugal and unsustainable habit for now? Or is my ‘attachment’ to coffee just some unhealthy thing I need to cut out entirely?  If I think too hard on this, I may slip into full existential crisis

For now, I don’t really have a choice; I’m going to cut back to a cup a day. Ok, I could stop drinking coffee altogether, but that would give me a headache and make me all grouchy and spacey.  Or I could keep consuming at my current levels and eventually lose the ability to sit still–perhaps another sign that coffee is not such a great influence on my life.

Some things I’m going to do to ‘cope.’

• Switch to a spicy herbal tea during social occasions at home when others are drinking coffee.
• Drinking something besides coffee if I go to a café with someone, and I’ve already had my one cup for the day (this one will be hard).
• Consider drinking coffee only at cafés, special occasions etc.   If I have to pay more each time I drink it, I might drink less. . .
• Be more ‘mindful’ about how much coffee I drink each day–I’m not sure how I got up to six cups a day, but I bet it’s not exactly rocket science.

Any other thoughts or ideas?  Do you have any bad habits that you allow yourself or that you’re trying to cut back on?  Do you drink coffee not at all, in moderation, or to some other ungodly degree.

On time or chronically late: a cultural connection?

As a time-centered type-A recovering work-a-holic living in the South of France, I occasionally struggle with the notion of time and timeliness. I try hard to open my mind, to adapt to my new cultural surroundings, but for the sake of full disclosure, as sweetly as I appear to brush aside incidences of lateness when living abroad, I’ve never really found the secret to real patience.

You know that wise old woman you once met who lived through the Great Depression and can’t stand to see even a crumb of food wasted?  I feel that way about time. I’ve lived through periods where time felt all too scarce and I can’t stand to see it squandered . . .

My struggle with cultural attitudes towards being on time  (. . . or not) made this post at Financial Samurai:   Punctuality Breeds Credibility–Stop Being Late! particularly cathartic for me.  When someone states exactly what you’re thinking, it spares you a rant of your own. . .you just feel so validated. Who wouldn’t feel validated after reading this:

There is one simple reason why people are late and it pisses me off. The reason is because they believe their time is more precious than your time.  It’s not because they are disorganized, have bad time management skills, or are stupid.  Someone who is late is selfish, and believes they are more important than you.  There is no other explanation.  If you want to be on time, you will be on time.

I must admit, that is exactly, how I feel. When someone is fifteen minutes late for a social occasion or more than five minutes late for a professional occasion, I get bent out of shape.  I start making judgments, tapping my foot.  Give me five or ten minutes more and I’ll be twitching.  After fifteen minutes, I’m officially insulted.

Yet timeliness doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone.  In fact, in many cultures, overemphasis on time, can get you into just as much trouble as being late! Consider the following examples before you flip out at someone’s lateness next time (ok, that’s easy to say now.  I’ll probably consider and still be annoyed. . .)

Telling Time in Madagascar:

Once, while studying in a small fishing village on the southern tip of Madagascar, I needed to make an appointment.  I intended to meet with the fisherman early the next morning and accompany them on their shark fishing expedition.  “What time should I meet you?” I asked.  Confusion followed, and plenty of debate and discussion that I couldn’t quite grasp.  “Five o-clock.” The fishermen finally agreed.

That night, after I zipped closed my tent and stretched out on my sleeping bag, it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen a single person in this village of 350 people with a watch. And since the closest electricity was a day’s travel away, I doubted very much that anyone had a clock running back in his house.

The next day, I met the fisherman.  The actual time we left was actually closer to six thirty, but that turned out to be entirely arbitrary.  Really, in this village, you go fishing when the onshore wind stops blowing, usually about an hour before dawn . . . but not always.  It simply depends on the weather. Hence the moment of confusion when I asked what time we’d be leaving.

Not only is being 15 minutes late utterly meaningless in many situations in Madagascar, you run the risk of insulting people by being overly focused on your watch. Personal connection is valued much more highly than minutes.  So, if you are meant to visit someone at a given time during the day, and the trip to his/her home takes you past the home of someone else you know, you better stop by.  Not stopping by for a visit is, in fact, highly rude.  So is not stopping whatever you’re doing to take a few minutes to chat with someone you know on the street.  No one cares if you have an ‘appointment.’  Relationships appear to be the most valuable means of investing your time.

Schmoozing in the South of France:

It is considered good form and good business to engage in friendly conversation during business activities here in France.   You may argue that the same holds true in the US, but it is a question of degree, I tell you! An recent example of this, is the last time we met with our attorney here in France.  Unlike many professionals you can meet in the South of France, he is impeccably punctual.  However, you will never see him cut short a friendly discussion with a client. I sat back during our last meeting and observed like the complete foreigner I am as the conversation turned from legal strategy to cycling and skiing, my husband and our attorney enjoying comparing the different great hills of the Southern Alps and the strategies needed to surmount the m on  a bike.  .  .

Can you imagine a lengthy discussion of this nature with your attorney back in the US? I didn’t think so.  Why not? Because time is money, right?  Probably you are being billed for the discussion with your attorney in the US by the way.

Whose notion of time is better?

Now that’s a question I can’t answer.  I can say that I personally feel more comfortable when people behave the way I expect them to–who wouldn’t?  I could lie and pretend to be more open-minded and patient than I am, but I won’t. I have a preference, a very clear preference!  Maybe it’s a question of habit or unquestioned assumptions.  Perhaps, after many years of working on myself, I’ll reach a point when lateness doesn’t bother me.

I’m not there yet.

But I often ask myself: is it better to count up your precious minutes rather than spending extra time chatting with a friend you meet on the street at a moment’s notice?  Is it healthy to see time as money?  Does it make us happier people?

I don’t know.  What I do know is that I love when people arrive on time–and that I continue to see timeliness as a sign of respect.

What do you think? Have you ever had any moments where cultural notions of time complicated things for you?  What are your expectations about timeliness in business dealings?

Shelter publications: the end of decorating your way to security.

I can’t control that big, scary world outside, so I’ll just throw up a new window treatment. Perhaps rather than say that people had their heads in the sand from 2001-2010, we should argue that they had their noses in shelter magazines, or glued to Home and Garden TV.   Can you ignore your problems?  A number of people seem to have tried–albeit with mixed results.  You can now find articles describing the demise of the shelter magazines (not to mention the way of life that goes with them) all over the web.  Meanwhile homes drift ‘underwater,’ governments bail out banks, your neighbor forecloses and a company comes in to do a ‘trash out’ of his home–where they remove all those decorations, the big screen TV, whatever.  (If you’re unfamiliar with the trash out, see this article from the News Hour.)

What the heck is a shelter publication? I found this description from an article Nancy Davis Kho at SFGate.com particularly helpful:

Shelter magazines really came into their own in the post-9/11 environment. Gayle Goodson Butler, editor in chief of Meredith Corp.’s Better Homes and Gardens magazine, summarizes the lure of glossy home-design magazines at a time of national insecurity: “People wanted to create comfort and order in their lives. They might not have been able to control the world outside, but they could control their own home environment.”

Now, am I saying that Martha Stewart, the Home and garden channel and all those decorating neighbors are the cause of our economic woes?  No, I’m not.  They simply served as a distraction from the really pressing concerns during a decade where we could have been facing our troubles.  I’m not even against decorating, having a nice home or even having a home with ‘curb appeal.’  I suppose an interest in these things is neutral–as is an interest in fashion, good food, sex.  The problem is when we allow an ‘interest’ like interior design to become a smoky opiate–and then toke on it as we stand on the deck of a sinking ship.

I for one am quite relieved to see these kinds of publications going under along with the prices of housing and hope it will draw some attention to more relevant concerns.  While the loss of those cozy homes and the publications that coveted them may bring about discomfort–that is what change is all about.  Change, however, can be devastating if you refuse to adapt–or if you’re so busy curling up to a false sense of security that you can’t see it coming.

When is the last time you ate meat?

“When is the last time you ate meat?” my mother-in-law asks me.  She’s ready to shop for today’s meals and wants to make sure we’re all staying well-nourished.

My mother and father-in-law were born not long after the end of World War II in Europe.  They didn’t experience rationing, but they grew up with an awareness of the possibility of ‘not enough.’  To my mother-in-law at least, not eating meat seems to be something that you do because you have financial trouble.  She likes keeping us all well-nourished (and is an excellent cook!).  My husband has told her that we eat meat only on rare occasions, and I can tell that she finds this worrisome.  Although she remains tactful about it, I can tell she doesn’t trust the meatless diet. In her mind, no meat=undernourished.

I am not hard and fast in my vegetarianism.  I’ll eat meat if I’m a guest in someone’s home–or whatever else they serve, for that matter.  I’ll occasionally prepare meat for meals at home–perhaps once a month.  I find meat expensive–particularly if you want to buy meat of quality that is not treated with antibiotics or fed with animal products (um, gross!). I also know that rampant meat-eating is not sustainable on our planet. I’m not saying my reasons are completely logical or perfect–but dietary choices seldom are the product of logic and reason, in my experience.

While I understand my mother-in-law’s post-war experience and the link in her mind between meatless and malnourished, I’m quite sure you can be well-nourished without meat.  If you want to, you can look up RDA for protein online and add up all your grams of protein and calories etc just to make sure, but I find that tiresome and cumbersome!  I don’t want to make my meals into an accounting process–and why should I? Most regular meat-eaters out there don’t sit down and account for all the grams of protein to see if they’re getting too much–yes, too much protein is known to be unhealthy as well.

I am running my own experiment: how does my body respond to not eating meat for weeks and months on end? Here are my results for your consideration:

Normal to excellent blood tests: I’ve had blood work done both in the US and in France in recent years–all of my levels were ‘ideal’ or ‘normal’ except for my sodium level, which was just a tick under normal–nothing to worry about.  “Eat more salt,” doctors sometimes tell me.  I love salt, so I’m happy to comply.

Normal, healthy weight: I have a BMI of 21, comfortably within the ‘normal’ range from 18.5-24.9.  When perusing the medical records I ordered from the US before coming to France, I am often described in the general notes as a ‘healthy, well-nourished female.’

I also have plenty of energy for walking everywhere  (no car, remember).  I also participate in athletic activities like hiking, biking (including long rides and hills) and cross-country skiing–no problem.

Health issues? I occasionally get light-headed.  After careful checking, doctors have determined that this is likely due to low blood pressure and possibly low sodium levels, not anemia, lack of nutrients or under-weight.  I also have back problems that are likely due to the way my feet, knees and hips are aligned–a genetic trait that I’ve learned to counteract effectively through physical therapy and/or yoga done on a regular basis–not diet related!

I may not add up the calories and nutrients, but I do take some care. The staple of my diet is vegetables, vegetables, vegetables. In addition, I’m careful to eat whole grains, nuts, seeds and legumes on a regular basis, and I do drink milk each day–probably to the horror of all those people that think we cannot digest milk.  Fine, fine, but I seem to be doing ok. I eat at least two meals each day.

I’d be curious to know how the rest of you handle your own personal dietary experiments. Are there people out there who find they can’t go without meat?  I’m not saying it’s impossible or wrong! Has anyone had a bad experience with not eating meat or animal products? Does anyone count or add up protein, amino acids and calories?  I’m curious.  And no, I’m not trying to convert anyone to my dietary way of life.  I’m just arguing that mine is among many that will work.  I’ve also never been pregnant or nursing, but I suspect you can do it on a meatless diet–does anyone have experience with that?

Burkas to be outlawed in France–what is the world coming to?

I love France, but on occasion, I still  feel like a visitor from another planet.  Today is one of them, as the French continue to consider the question of outlawing burkas.  I never know what to do when such a controversy arises and I’m actually wondering what the heck I’ll do when I finally get my nationality (when some bureaucrat has finished his coffee and gets to my application in a couple of years).  How will I possibly vote with such issues in the limelight.   Although I generally try my hardest to ignore news topics that seem made more to distract our attention from relevant problems, this one has me squirming in discomfort. It bothers me so much for so many reasons that I can’t ignore it.  What I’m about to offer here is my honest and humble opinion–feel free to disagree, I don’t have a monopoly on right and wrong, and this question is messy.

First of all, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I feel uneasy seeing women wearing burkas.  Maybe it’s just my own cultural bias, but I don’t understand why a woman in a western country who has a choice would wear such a thing.  I can understand modesty.  I’m completely fine with women who want to cover their hair, but the feminist hairs prickle on the back of my neck when I see a burka.  That said, I feel the same way about women who get boob jobs–it’s the same judgmental, hair prickling experience.  I can’t believe it or understand it.  It shocks me–and maybe, just maybe a boob job shocks me more than a burka.  At least the burka is not a permanent deformation!

Still, as much as I might fail to understand people who dress in certain ways or opt for plastic surgery, I find it hard to stomach the idea of a law telling someone what they can wear. I mean, hey, we live in France.  I’ve seen women walking down the street with their rear ends flopping out from under their skirts–and large, sweating fat men with open shirts and pregnant bellies glistening in the sun on city benches.  How can you outlaw someone’s attire?  How can you get into someone’s business that much that you try to save them from themselves?  I can’t quite go there.  I prefer to sit back and judge in silence what I don’t understand.

Let’s strip off yet another layer of this problem: French culture.  In the US, do we really have a way to do things?  I can recall entering people’s homes and checking–do we or do we not remove our shoes in this house?  When inviting people to dinner–do we or do we not eat meat, pork, non-kosher foods?  I’ve had Muslim friends give me Christmas presents.  It seems in the US we bend over backwards to accommodate each other’s cultures–unless that’s just a California thing.  But the French have their way of doing things, their one way of doing things that they’ve been doing for centuries, so to them, it’s not quite the same question. The French like to say, “If we go to a country that requires we wear pants instead of shorts, we do it, so when ‘they’ come here, they should respect our customs too.”  This is the country where the bartender will refuse to serve you decaf because it’s bad for your health, people simply have opinions on how things are supposed to be that are not in place in the US.  I have to say, I find French culture charming, it’s part of why I live here, so I do kind of understand this strange and protective instinct to legislate it into existence.

But let’s undress the issue a step further: I can’t help but notice that, aside from the desire to protect French culture, there is a clear tone of racism in some of the comments I hear about this topic. I recently sat trapped in transit with a person who decided to use the time to convince me that ‘Arabs’ are lying, thieving, no good (insert explicative here).  I told him that where I come from, in California, that racism is quite taboo–that it’s so socially unacceptable that we just don’t even discuss it.  If someone is really racist, I wouldn’t know because the person would never dare say these kinds of things to me.   I squirmed in my seat during the entire ‘conversation’ and tried to reason, but my comments fell upon deaf ears.  Once someone opens up a racist diatribe, it’s hard to get in a word edgewise.  Now, maybe not everyone who thinks women shouldn’t wear burkas is a racist, but the link is now blazed into my mind.

Finally, we unwrap the problem to it’s final complicating factor: there are many, many laws in France and not so much enforcement of those laws. It is, in fact, illegal to let your dog poop on the sidewalk, but that doesn’t stop anyone.  In fact, when the police or any other group tries to enforce a law–like say, speed limits, you often get a public outcry.  “Facho,” they like to say.  Are the police enforcing actual laws really to be considered fascists?  Well, if we can’t control speed violations, rampant fraud and dog poop, why does anyone think they can suddenly become the fashion police?  I think that a very likely reaction to outlawing burkas would be a protest that involved . . .wearing burkas.

Ah, there are times when I just have to say that I abstain from comment during polite conversations.  I think I’ll let the French sort this one out on their own–but that won’t stop me from blogging about it.

Introverted? Highly sensitive? I think not. A simple response to intrusive noise.

As a society, we explain away the explosion of truly obnoxious and unhealthy bombardment of interruptions noises, images and messages by labeling people who struggle to tolerate such offenses.  Introverted?  Highly sensitive? ADD? Autistic?  Don’t call me names, just stop the racket.  Please. I find that on a daily basis, I’m losing my tolerance for certain aspects of life which many consider ‘normal.’  But I would like to suggest that the problem is not, in fact, with me.  The problem is with a society that considers such constant invasion to be ‘the norm.’

I’m now reminded of a specific occasion where I was sitting in a friend’s living room catching up on the latest with her family.  Her children were playing on the floor in front of us and behind them, on a giant flat screen TV, Tyra Banks was interviewing a series of guests about their experiences with female genital mutilation. “Sorry,” I told my friend after a few moments of physical discomfort.  “Could we turn off the TV?”  I often sound calm when I’m deeply upset–screaming on the inside, as it were.  (I’m not sure what’s worse, Tyra Banks or female genital mutilation, but I find both highly disturbing).

At the risk of sounding like a crusty old grouch and social outcast, does one really have to suffer from a ‘condition’ or be a certain type of person to find the following annoying?

• The women behind me on the bus who chatter constantly, repeating their last comment  rather than allowing a nanosecond of silence during the two-hour torture session (I mean, bus ride).
• The adolescent who carries a tiny pocket radio everywhere so that we all can ‘appreciate’ his taste in ‘music.’
• The businessman speaking in a loud voice on his cell phone while following me down the street as I try to get some air.
• The TV coverage of the earthquake in Haiti complete with wheelbarrows of dead bodies and mourning families on in the ‘background’ while people chat casually on some other topic.
• The intermittent radio chatter about the latest sensational murder, kidnapping and then the latest celebrity affair as I try to enjoy a cup of coffee.
• Billboards sprouting all over the place with slogans so inane that my skin prickles into goosebumps.

Lately, I’ve been very, very busy doing paperwork and moving from place to place.  My hobbies and pastimes have dwindled to walking alone in secluded areas, yoga, writing and reading.  Many of my social activities are out the window and, with DH hospitalized, I’m spending more time a lone than ever.  In my own home, I don’t have TV or radio.  If I want news, I seek it out on the internet, deftly avoiding sensationalism (thank you CNN and TF1, but I can imagine the horror in Haiti just fine on my own without your ‘personal interest’ stories).   In short, I live a noise-free existence–which I blame for my current ’sensitivities.’

If everyone could experience a one month ‘vacation’ from being constantly violated by TV, radio, cell phones, inane chatter and advertising,  the general tolerance for such abuse of the mind and spirit would sink drastically. We would, in fact, find that it is not just a few of us who think and feel better without all that noise.  It rather reminds me of the unfortunate individual with asthma back in the day when people still smoked in cafes.  While it only drove a few people to avoid going out for a drink, it wasn’t good for anyone.  And now, that the smoke has lifted, we can all breathe easier.

I’m curious to know if anyone else finds all the intrusive noise that has become so common in modern society  to be too much and/or if anyone has found a way to avoid it on a more permanent basis!

A cup of coffee, the end of civilization: small talk in France.

I defy you to sit in a cafe in France or attend a social gathering that does not include some kind of ranting about how civilization is circling the drain.  As a newcomer to French culture , I have no way of knowing if life moved more smoothly twenty or thirty years ago.    Although the state of the global climate and economy seem troublesome,  the ‘end of civilization’ often seems like the default topic of conversation. You can always bring up the last political scandal, the last young criminal you saw on tv, the state of the economy–then everyone can agree, throw up his or her hands and ask ‘what is the world coming to?’ or add a personal anecdote.

I’m not judging this phenomenon, just noticing it.  Perhaps I’m simply witnessing one more cultural trait as an outsider.  Still, as  hear people talking in cafes or in the markets, I wonder,  if civilization has taken such a bad turn, why don’t we DO something about it–besides complaining over our esspreso?

What do the French worry about the most?  Ten years ago, it seemed to be Americans, their bad food, their invasive fast food chains, genetically modified food, globalization, and outsourcing.  Now, the threats appear to be more internal.

People commonly rant about lack of security, lack of respect and a lack of civic duty.  All the unruly adolescents, un-integrated immigrants and unpunished crimes and insults have the French in a fury.  Respect had gone out the window, it seems, people cite the dog poop on the sidewalks (and sometimes simply tossed out the window), the loud music on public transportation, the pickpocketing.

Cost of living and uncertainty in employment weighs heavy on the minds of the French. Layoffs threaten people in many sectors.  When colleagues have been laid off, people certainly tend to feel forced to do the work of those who are gone.  The situation becomes more precarious and more stressful as time goes on.  Those who have tried to start their own businesses often find themselves earning less than the minimum wage.

And then, of course, there is the question of bureaucracy, the privileged government employees and corruption. Again, I never know how to compare societies.  Is the government, in fact, more corrupt in France than the US or do the French just bring up the dysfunctions of government more often in passing?

What I do know for sure is that humanity, the environment and the global economy are  facing strange times or at least a period of drastic change. I don’t know what’s in store for us exactly, but I certainly think that a continuing reduction in our ’standard of living’ is ahead–at least for Westerners.  To some extent, I have a hard time labeling this as a problem.  For too long we’ve felt too entitled to too much.  Having too much hasn’t made us happier, better, more advanced or more considerate of others.  As the days of ‘too much’ come to an end, what can we look forward to?  Times will certainly be different–most likely we will experience significant discomfort with this change of lifestyle. Is that bad?  It depends on your outlook.

We can continue to throw up our hands and say how awful it is or, instead, we can  view our changing and unstable times as a call to change and adapt ourselves. To me, at the very least, this seems like a more pragmatic approach than complaining.  I’m much more interested in conversations where people describe how they’ve learned to cut back on their spending or how they’ve learned to use less energy in their households than conversations in which people throw up their arms and give up. I’d be strongly interested in a conversation where people discussed how they’d formed a grass roots organization bent on stopping government corruption, helping people find work or supporting local farmers.  I’m not saying we should forget our problems or stop discussing them.  But I’m growing weary of the same conversations over and over.  The worst thing I’ve heard so far, “We can only do what the government allows us to do.” The lack of personal responsibility in that remark shocks me.  And I’m not easily shocked.

I’m glad the French are aware of how much trouble we may be in.  Sometimes I get the feeling that Americans prefer to hide in their living rooms and make love to their plasma TV’s.  But what is the good of awareness if you don’t intend to act? Too bad not many French people read my blog –but if you’re out there, feel free to answer or tell me how wrong my interpretation is.